


Things in between the fractures and fissures

by impossibletruths



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Kashaw is a good guy, honesty is good and important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7306441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s fine, she tells herself. It’s an idle curiosity. It’s checking in on a friend. There is a question she needs to ask, but it is not the one she’s thinking of.</p><p>Or, two weeks after the Tomb Incident, Keyleth and Kashaw have a chat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things in between the fractures and fissures

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Surrounded” by Delta Rae. Spoilers through episode 57.

It takes some time, and good deal of asking around, and she almost turns back on three or four different occasions––because really it’s none of her business, and why does she care anyways––but eventually she finds him at a makeshift clinic at the southeastern edge of town. A handful of residents nod to her as she passes, and a few even call out greetings; Vox Machina’s celebrity status seems to have only grown in their absence. Keyleth keeps her head down and tries to disappear, hurrying along until finally she reaches her destination: a short, slightly lopsided building across the street from the the charred remains of one of the town’s estates. She spares it a wince, trying not to think of the brutalities of their successful if short-lived rebellion and steps up to the clinic.

She knocks on the door a couple of times, and tries the handle when no one answers. Unlocked. Carefully, she pokes her head inside.

“Hello?" 

A muffled shout answers from within, and she enters, footfalls soft on smooth floorboards. Dim light filters into the foyer, and it takes her eyes a moment to adjust. The room is empty, though it looks like it might have been busy earlier: chairs line one wall, some pulled out of place; she picks out dirt and mud and scuff marks on the floor; a table near the door is covered with bandages, empty vials and a bowl of coins.

“Hello?” she repeats.

“In the back!”

As steps a little further into the room she sees the hallway leading back. She pads down it tentatively. A few doors lead off to the sides, but they are dark; only the door at the very end of the hall has a sliver of light pouring through the crack between door and floorboards. Her feet seem to slow on their own as she approaches, each step heavier and heavier until she comes to a stop, arm raised to knock, considering and reconsidering.

This isn’t really any of her business. He’s clearly fine. Right? He said he was fine. She came here to talk to the Sun Tree, not him. Why does she care anyways? This is ridiculous.

She should go.

She turns to slip away before anyone discovers she was here, and behind her the door creaks open, a long rectangle of light pouring down the hallway, her shadow a narrow, crooked silhouette on the floorboards. She freezes.

“Give it a week, you’ll be fine. And next time someone dares you to jump off the roof just. Don’t.”

“Yes Brother Kash,” says a voice, young and chastised, and Keyleth slowly turns back around to see a kid––maybe eleven? Human ages are hard to pinpoint––step out of the room, arm in a sling. The boy pauses when he sees her, and his eyes go wide, and Keyleth doesn’t have time to do more than shake her head at him before he says, “You’re one of those heroes!”

“No,” Keyleth says, trying to, what, shush him? Her hands wave wildly in front of her. “No, I’m not, I was just on my way out, actually––”

“Keyleth?” He appears in the doorway, arms crossed and brow furrowed. He looks strange, out of his armor. Smaller. Softer. No, not softer, just… less brittle. It jars her.

Her hands are still stretched out in front of her. She drops them hastily.

“Kash!”

“What are you doing here?”

“Um.” Funny how when you actually find the person you were looking for all the words fly out of your head. Or maybe that’s just her.

Kash looks down at the kid, still staring at her with open-mouthed adoration. It sets her teeth on edge.

“Get lost,” Kash says, and the boy jumps and scurries away. They hear the door thump shut behind him.

“I just, though I’d check in?” Keyleth tries. “You weren’t at the castle, and I have business in town anyways, and I thought–– Yeah.”

“Right.” They stay like that for a moment, just staring. Then Kash sighs. “Want a drink?”

“Gods, yes.” 

Kashaw retreats into the room and Keyleth follows. She expects something akin to the dark, shuttered foyer, but finds instead a small, clean room. Kash disappears behind the desk for a moment, muttering to himself as he fishes something out of a drawer, and Keyleth has a moment to take everything in: the stool in one corner, the table in the center of the room, the shelf next to the door stocked with bandages and potions and a handful of dried herbs. She recognizes a few: chamomile, ginger, feverfew, St. John’s wort. The smell of them hangs in the air, as does the sharp tang of healing potions. The last rays of the day’s light glint through the open window as the sun sets behind the mountains and sconces glow brightly on the walls to shine on dark wood, and there’s something strangely homely about the place. It looks well-used, worn but cared for. As if he has truly put down roots here.

Keyleth doesn’t know if that surprises her or not. She thinks it does. Not that he doesn’t seem the type; this is just a little, well. Simple. But nice.

Something in her aches for anything this simple.

“Found it.” Kashaw appears from behind the desk with a bottle and a pair of wooden cups, and Keyleth leaves off examining his stores to accept her drink. He takes his own and leans back against the desk, and after a moment of indecision she settles on the table, toes just brushing the ground, and takes a sip. It’s something hard and a little bitter, not the lukewarm ale they’ve been drinking in Westruun, and she appreciates the burn as it goes down. For a moment silence fills the room, swelling until it is almost unbearable.

Only, it isn’t. It’s not crushing, nor overwhelming; it’s the silence of a warm night, when the breeze blows through the trees and the crickets sing and you can just sit with someone and not say anything at all. Keyleth feels herself slowly relax. Or, maybe that’s the alcohol.

“We killed a dragon,” she says, finally. “I guess you were right. We can do it. Some of it, at least.”

“I’ll drink to that,” says Kash, and toasts her. Keyleth waits for him to bring his cup down again before speaking.

“How are things? Here? Allura says you’re setting up a defense thing. A kind of screen?” She imagines it must be like an enormous, continuous hallucinatory terrain spell, but she cannot imagine something of that magnitude. But then, she is not an arcanist with decades of experience. She trusts Allura to know what she’s doing. She’s never led them astray before.

Kashaw nods. “Yeah, Zee’s helping with that. I mostly stick to the town. Lots of people here need a healer and, well, I guess I do in a pinch.” He smiles as he says it, a crooked thing. Keyleth feels a frown pull at the corners of her mouth.

He doesn’t look wan, or angry, or ill. A little tired maybe, but no different from the last time she saw him, nearly two weeks ago now. She takes another sip before she asks her next question, the one she thinks she sought him out to ask.

“Are you okay? After… y’know.” She doesn’t know how to put it delicately. Words have never been her strong suit. “Is Vesh… Is everything alright? Are you?”

She expects– well, she doesn’t know what she expects. Expects him to clam up, maybe, the way Vax does. Or wave it off with a joke, like Vex, or play dumb like Scanlan, or put on a mask like Percy. He doesn’t.

What he does is sigh, and take a long pull from his drink, and set his cup down. He crosses his arms.

“Actually,” he says, straightforward to the point of bluntness, and all at once she doesn’t know why she ever expected something different from him, “I’m doing okay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s no picnic, and I miss getting paid, but hey, noble causes and all that, right?” He smiles as he says it, wry but honest.

“Oh. Good. That’s, yeah. Good.” She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, for some reason. She takes another drink. “Cause y’know I just thought maybe something might have happened? While we were gone? And I just wanted to check.”

Kash examines her now. Keyleth’s fingers tap a staccato run against her cup and she wonders what he sees. Her anxieties? Her sleepless nights? Her guilt? So much has happened since they were last in Whitestone: Kamaljiori, Craven Edge, Kevdak, Westruun, Umbrasyl, Vasselheim.

Gods, but it’s been a long couple of weeks. Everything they have seen and done hovers over her, a dark cloud of her own doubts and fears, and try as she might she cannot shake them. Does Kash see? He must. Everyone must. How many times has someone told her she’s like an open book? She may as well just resign herself to it.

“You look like you could use another drink,” he says finally. Keyleth laughs.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She wants to be sober for this… whatever it is. Talk. Chat. It would be too easy to let the alcohol dull her senses, fill the cavity in her chest. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Well I could use another drink,” he decides, and busies himself with the bottle.

“Kashaw,” she says. It doesn’t roll of her tongue quite right. _Kashaw_. Kash fits him far better, short and precise and a little impatient. “Kash.”

His head turns towards her, eyebrows raised. Keyleth tries to swallow down the question in her throat––does she even want to ask it? It seems far too complicated for this thing between them, whatever it is––but it comes out anyways, clear and concise and curious. He hadn’t realized how much she needed to know, not until the words are in the air between them, weighty and weightless all at once.

“Did you mean what you said in the tomb?”

His fingers still around the bottle. Her own tap faster.

“What, that you all suck?” He tries for levity, but it falls flat before he finishes speaking, and she thinks that is because he knows what she’s trying to say. She clarifies anyways.

“That you did it,” and neither wants to linger on that moment, “because you knew I wanted you to.”

“Ah.” 

He won’t meet her eyes. Keyleth waits, a strange flutter in her stomach. This is important. She needs to know.

“Yeah,” he says finally, gruff, and she is back in the tomb again, heartbeat too fast and just a little short of breath, but this time there is no life-or-death situation to explain her reaction, no close call, no almost-loss. This time there is only her and Kash, sitting in his tiny office as the sun sets behind the towering mountains, and the realization hits her like a physical blow.

“I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything,” he hurries to assure her while she reels. “I meant what I said, about life and all. Saving hers was just… It was the right thing to do. No matter the consequences.” He takes a long drink from his cup. Keyleth’s fingers clench around hers, the wood warm and smooth in her hands. “I wouldn’t be much of a cleric if I didn’t stand by what I believe in." 

“You’re a good man,” Keyleth manages, even though she has told him before. It catches in her throat. She downs the last of her drink. “Thank you.”

His eyes jump up to meet hers. Maybe he hears the twist in her voice. Maybe he’s just being polite. “Are you alright?”

“I don’t know,” she says, because she doesn’t, she hasn’t in a long while, and she’s just so _tired_ . Tired of the anger, the fear, the uncertainty, the guilt. Tired of being told to _lighten up, have a little fun, don’t worry so much_. As if it’s that easy. Voicing it is a relief; she laughs without meaning to, a dry and humorless thing.

“Right.” He looks torn. Does he regret asking? Most people do. They don’t want to hear her worries. They don’t want to shoulder her fears. Her fingers twist around the rim of her cup.

“It’s okay,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.” Or maybe shouldn’t is the word. Everyone else can bottle it up, move forward unencumbered by doubt. Vex has died and flies all the freer for it; Grog fought the monster from his childhood and came out on top; even Vax stepped forward to face Her despite his fear, and she envies and questions his newfound faith in equal measure. But none of that matters. She’s the one who can’t move on. She’s the one holding them back.

_We’re not heroes._

_We pretty much are, actually._

No. She didn’t come here for this.

“I’m sorry.” She stands abruptly. “I should go. I didn’t mean to keep you from––” She waves her hand around the empty room, as if someone might magically appear from the woodwork and claim his attention. Kashaw stands as well, grabbing her hand as she turns to leave.

The contact shocks her still.

“Wait, wait, hang on.” His voice loses some of its edge. He sounds open and honest, like he did during their talk among the trees after–– after. Keyleth shuts her eyes for a second before she turns back to him.

He looks torn. But not, surprisingly, like he regrets it. Keyleth’s face softens of its own accord, and she shakes her head a little, hair shifting in rippling waves at the motion.

“Kash, please. Let it go.”

He backs down. “Alright. But––” He sighs, one shoulder shifting in an aborted shrug. “Listen, if you want a drink sometime. Or need somewhere to be. My door’s open.”

He can’t quite look at her as he says it, and it takes her a moment to understand what he’s offering, but once she does she can’t help but smile, an honest-to-gods smile, for the first time in–– Well, in a while.

“Thank you, Kash,” she says, and leans forward to press a whisper-soft kiss against his cheek before squeezing his hand and taking her leave. If she stays she will–– she doesn’t know. Probably do something embarrassing and irritating, and Kash will regret offering her a drink and a moment of his time, and she doesn’t want that because this warms her inside. It is smoother than their awkward dance during their trial contract, more comfortable than their uncertainties in Vasselheim, and it fills her with a flutter nerves that is not sickening or heavy but instead buzzing-light, the slightly unsteady, warm-chest feeling of good alcohol on a cold night.

She does not want to ruin that. She wants to grasp it tight and never let go.

What she might have seen, had she stayed, is Kashaw standing there, staring after her, hand pressed against his cheek. A solitary pillar framed by the last light of day.

But she does not stay, nor does she look back. Instead she threads her way through town to the Sun Tree, step and heart light in a way neither have been in a long time.

For once, the flutter in her ribcage is not suffocating. It buoys her.

As she reaches her destination and folds her knees to sit within a chamber of roots and earth beneath the heart of the Sun Tree, eyes closed and breathing in the smell of warm earth and growing things, she cannot help but think this is a good change.


End file.
